Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Dad: Buttons, zippers and snaps, oh my.

Thanks
to Adam and Eve, we’re no longer allowed to strut around buck naked in
the Garden of Eden. Instead we have to spend lots of time and money
outfitting ourselves and, by extension, our babies. For whatever reason,
a grown man running around naked in public is considered obscene, but
when a baby does it, it’s hilarious. Of course if it goes on too long,
the cuteness wears off and the calls to Social Services begin.

Nope, doesn't count.

Rather
than let our kid walk around free and easy like Elizabeth Berkley
post-Saved by the Bell, we make an effort to keep Susan clothed. She has
quite a wardrobe and has already outgrown half her closet. We sometimes
put her in 4 outfits a day just to make sure she wears everything at
least once. There is already a “Things Susan Can’t Wear Anymore” bin. In
a terrible sign of things to come, Susan gets new outfits every week
despite having a closet and two dressers full of clothes. We can’t help
ourselves. Baby clothes are like crack. We walk into Babies R Us, and
there are hundreds of outfits that would just look so damn cute on
Susan. We’re powerless. They put the clothes front and center as soon as
you walk in. You may have entered looking for bottles, but before you
know it you’re trying to decide between the monkey dress and smiley
flower onesie because you only have enough money to buy seven of the 12
outfits you’ve thrown into your shopping cart. We’re not to the point of
pawning our television for footie pajamas (yet), but we’ve spent our
fair share of cash on clothes for Susan.

We'll take one of everything.

I
didn’t think I’d actually enjoy it before we had our baby, but shopping
for baby clothes is fun. For baby girls, the clothing features three
main groups: cute animals (elephants, giraffes, ducks, etc.), cute
insects (butterflies, bumblebees, ladybugs, etc.) and cute vegetation
(flowers, strawberries, etc.). Boy and girl clothes are distinctly
separated in baby stores, and even though I think Susan would look great
in a monster truck onesie, I dare not venture away from the smocked,
pink-tinted land of baby girl clothes. Heaven forbid that I cross the
center aisle in Babies R Us and accidentally pick up something that was
meant for a boy. I wouldn’t want THIS IDIOT
knocking on my door. For what it’s worth Sean Harris, we have a Steve
Smith Panthers jersey that I’m going to put my daughter in every Sunday
once football starts.Baby
clothes are great when they’re on the rack and when they’re on your
kid. Putting them on is the problem. My question for the baby clothes
makers around the world is WHY DO THE BUTTONS HAVE TO BE SO DAMN
SMALL???? Susan isn’t dressing herself. The adults are. So why do they
put buttons that only an infant could handle onto baby clothes? Were they outsourced to The Shire? Do you
know how hard it is to squeeze a quarter-inch button into a slot that’s
half the size of my pinky nail? Maybe it’s not that bad if you’re a
representative of the Lollipop Guild, but for those of us NOT from Oz,
it’s near impossible...especially when you’re trying to button up a
squirming infant who’s been on the changing table way too long because
her bumbling father can’t fasten three buttons on the back of her pretty
pink dress. It seriously would be easier to use a stapler and some duct
tape, but again there’s the whole Social Services thing. I’m becoming
more and more tempted to just let Susan wear her clothes like one of
those drafty hospital gowns.

That’s
why I’m a huge proponent of zippers. They should put them on everything
baby wears. Gowns, pajamas, diapers, socks, swaddlers, whatever. Any
chance I get to put Susan in something that zips, I take it, especially her
pajamas. That way when I stumble into her nursery at 5 a.m. to change
her, I don’t have to fumble with buttons designed for an Ewok or a crazy
maze of snaps that only the guy from A Beautiful Mind can decipher.

It's a little known fact that John Nash designed baby clothes for Carter's
between stints as a math professor and code cracker for the CIA.

The
clothes, at least for now, are relatively cheap since there isn’t much
material needed to fashion a dress for a 12-pounder. We also have the
benefit of not asking any input from Susan since, well, she can’t talk.
Once she starts developing her own tastes though, I think we’re in
trouble. I can’t wait to go look for a prom dress. I’d actually prefer
that to have buttons. LOTS of buttons.